FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW;3 Paul Bowles Stories And a Hint of Hitchcock

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: January 17, 1996

Coolly enigmatic, with hooded eyes, a patrician accent and an air of unbreachable hauteur, the author Paul Bowles suggests a highbrow Alfred Hitchcock in his introductions to the film adaptations of three of his short stories in the movie "Halfmoon" at the Film Forum.

This aura of sly knowingness with a hint of menace goes to the heart of the stories that Frider Schlaich and Irene von Alberti, who wrote and produced "Halfmoon," have filmed with a remarkably acute sensitivity to landscape and atmosphere. "Merkala Beach," "Call at Corazon" and "Allal" are all tales of temptation, treachery and revenge in which a heated sidelong glance conveys more truth than the characters' charged but elliptical dialogue.

Merkala Beach" examines the friendship of two shiftless young Moroccan men, one a drinker, the other a smoker of kef. Their edgy relationship is tested when a seductive young woman (Sondos Belhassen) gives herself first to one, then to the other. Mr. Bowles, filmed at his home in Tangiers, introduces the tale by explaining he is trying to show "the superior effects of smoking cannabis over those of alcohol." But the vicious little story is much more. It is a cold-eyed look at a kind of primitive male camaraderie in which every friendly gesture is also a move in a game whose inevitable outcome is an eruption of violence.

"Call at Corazon" depicts the hellish honeymoon of a mismatched British couple sailing up the Amazon on an overcrowded, pest-ridden cargo boat. The husband (Sam Cox), a taciturn writer who bitterly proclaims that "woman requires strict ritualistic observance of the traditions of sexual behavior," intimidates his wife (Veronica Quilligan) by buying a monkey and installing it in their cabin. She retaliates by getting drunk. As they head into the steamy jungle, their war of attrition escalates into the cruelest possible acts of revenge and counterrevenge.

In the third story, the ominous mood of the first two tales assumes a supernatural dimension. Allal, a solitary Moroccan boy (Said Zakir) who has grown up a pariah in his desert village because he is illegitimate, befriends an itinerant old man (Mohammed Belfquih) selling poisonous snakes. While sheltering the snake dealer for a night in his desert hovel, Allal steals one of his cobras. In a firelight ritual in which he charms the snake into winding itself around his body, he merges identities with it.

Embellished with surreal touches that show the snake scales sliding across the boy's eyes while he sleeps, "Allal" is as spellbinding as it is creepy. In Mr. Zakir's blood-chilling portrayal, the boy is a glittering-eyed desert creature, a wild child who may speak human language but lives the feral, instinctual life of a reptile.

Together the three stories capture the essence of Mr. Bowles's vision of human cruelty as a driving life force indivisible from the harsh equatorial landscapes in which his characters find themselves. With a parched sexuality that is secretive and fraught with violence, these people scent each other like vigilant wild beasts waiting for just the right moment to pounce. As scary as they may be, they are also thoroughly recognizable.

HALFMOON

Directed, produced and written (in English and Arabic, with English subtitles) by Frieder Schlaich and Irene von Alberti, based on three short stories by Paul Bowles; director of photography, Volker Tittel; edite' by Magdolna Rokop and Margarete Rose; music by Roman Bunka; released by First Run Features. At the Film Forum, 209 Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 93 minutes. This film is not rated.